Disclaimer-TMNT and characters don't belong to me
Catalyst
April didn't know when or how it happened.
She wasn't sure if it was one single event, or the inevitable chain of occurrences that happened because of their friendship.
She was now 18, and about to graduate high school. She had dated Casey a few times but there wasn't a spark.
It wasn't like there was anything wrong with Casey (or anything too wrong with Casey).
There was just nothing there except friendship.
She sat down in Donnie's lab, watching him as he measured out a chemical and with the steady hands of a trained surgeon, carefully added it to another mix. He watched it briefly, and then, in his own little world, as he usually was when he was pursuing a hypothesis, wheeled his chair around to the other side of the desk, writing something down quickly in the notebook that lay open.
She found herself staring at his shell, and with a start, felt mesmerized at the pattern that fell on her eyes.
Swirls of brown and green, with the slightest hint of gold.
There were a few lines scattered around his shell, some longer, some wider.
They didn't fit in with the beautiful shell before her.
Those had to be scars.
"April?"
"Hmm?" She asked in response, noticing that he hadn't turned around at all.
"Can you hand me that slide please?"
She nodded numbly, and stood up, walking slowly, and trying to move herself out of the shell-induced reverie. She found the item he requested, and walked it over to him, placing it in his hand softly. He looked up from the microscope, the tails of his mask reaching past his shoulder and gave her a small smile as he thanked her.
She smiled back and bid him good-bye, noticing that she felt a slight unease within herself and nauseated at the thought of just staring at his shell all day.
What was wrong with her?
She had seen it before, it wasn't something new.
She walked home to the apartment she shared with her father, then fell into bed, and let sleep take hold of her. _
Casey came over the next day after school. She was helping him tutor, but they both knew it wasn't that big of a deal how well they did the last three weeks of classes. They had both been accepted to colleges already, with financial aid already on the way. (Casey, courtesy of a lucrative hockey scholarship, and April because of her hard work ethic and grades).
"Why don't we just go down to see the guys April?" Casey asked, bored out of his mind as April tried to get him to focus on some of the homework that they were supposed to be doing.
Her heart just wasn't in it though.
She hesitated slightly, and then said, "Okay."
She watched as Casey's eyes narrowed.
He looked at her with a strange face, then sighed, but his feet up on the coffee table and said, "What happened?"
April found her shoulders shrugging. "I don't know."
The truth was she didn't know.
She couldn't understand why the sudden obsession with Donnie's shell came on, and why she felt butterflies in her stomach looking at it.
If anything, it was the one thing that obviously made him different from her.
If anything, it should freak her out.
Instead, she thought it was one of the most beautiful things that she had ever seen before.
"What did Donnie do?" Casey prompted, after looking at April.
She shook her head in exasperation.
"What do you mean?"
"I don't know. You're just moping like a woman sorned or scorned or something."
"We need to work on your vocabulary, Casey."
"Doesn't matter, April. I'm going to be playing hockey anyway. Don't change the subject."
She blinked her eyes a few times at him.
"Come on, Red. Something happened. Just tell me."
She was hesitant, but then realized that Casey Jones' stubbornness was second only to her own.
It would be easier for her to just give in to his pestering.
She sighed again, and said, "I really don't know. I was just sitting with him in the lab yesterday, and..."
"And?"
"And I had to leave. It just...was too much being in there."
"Are you saying you don't want to go back down there?" Casey asked, concerned that Don did something to make her feel uncomfortable.
He had been out of the stalker phase for a while now, thankfully. Casey didn't really think that Donnie would have done something to make her uncomfortable.
At least not on purpose.
"No, of course not. It was just yesterday. I don't know. And that's why I am frustrated."
"Was there something different that happened yesterday?"
April thought to herself, 'of course there is, I just found myself checking out his turtle shell for at least 10 minutes.'
She wasn't about to tell Casey that though.
Casey made April's decision for her.
"Not a good reason. Let's go!" He pulled her out of the apartment, and marched her down the street to the sewer entrance that they were familiar with.
Casey walked into the lair, and immediately started mocking Raph who in turn, pulled Casey into a headlock.
April's eyes were on the lab.
She said hello to Mikey and Leo, but headed straight back to what had become one of her favorite places in the entire world.
She remembered her awe that she felt the first time that she had seen the lab, impressed with how many different ways Donnie had managed to recycle things. It was too bad that nobody would ever see his genius besides his close friends, family and enemies.
The recycling companies would love him.
Instead of the sounds of tinkering or typing, there was absolute silence.
She walked in cautiously, looking around and then found him, asleep on a tatami mat that he usually kept in the lab, huddled into a ragged blanket for warmth.
He must have been too tired to go to his room, and he wanted to actually get sleep instead of the dozing that he usually did at his desk.
She found herself drawn to his shell again, wondering how it would feel under her touch. Probably a mix of smooth and rough, lines and swirls in a pattern and design that was completely unique to Donatello.
She left her thoughts to conjecture though, because she wasn't about to touch him without asking, and she had been trained never to wake a sleeping ninja.
April stopped as she realized that she was essentially stalking him, watching him sleep like that vampire in the stupid books did to the girl, Bella.
She forced herself to walk away from her friend, and with extreme self control she didn't even know that she had, she exited the lab without turning around.
"Hey," she heard his voice say behind her a couple of hours later.
She sat on the couch, watching another stupid anime with the guys when he came out, looking like a little kid, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
He looked at her blearily and stifled a yawn. "I didn't realize you were here."
She glanced at him. "I saw you were asleep, and I didn't want to wake you."
He gave her a slight smile, still tired and waking up.
"Thanks for that," he said, and walked into the kitchen.
April turned away from him, trying to focus on the tv show.
"Yo, D. What are you doing?" Casey's voice rang out, almost alarmed. "Why are you taking that off?"
April's eyes snapped to Casey and then to the kitchen where Donnie stood, getting himself something to drink. He had his hands on the back of his head, where he stood untying his purple mask.
He looked down at the mask and then glanced over at Casey with a bemused expression, his head cocked to the side in question.
He looked at Casey, and said, "It's not going to kill me to take this off."
He then shrugged, and continued, "When I sleep with it on, it just doesn't feel right after."
April wasn't paying attention to the conversation as much as she was very aware of Donatello without a mask on.
She looked like a deer in the headlights.
Her eyes were wide as she took in the brown eyes that were revealed with a very handsome, but still green face.
She couldn't take her eyes off of him.
How was it that a small piece of fabric like that could hide someone so attractive?
Throughout her friendship with the turtles, she had only thought of them as that. They were sweet, and more human than most people, even considering their genetic makeup, but seeing Donnie without his mask brought something on that she had never felt before.
Her hands trembled slightly and her heart was pounding loudly in her chest.
And, it was completely ridiculous.
She remembered, how could she forget? She had seen him without his mask once before.
After that awful, vicious attack that Slash dealt him.
In fact, at one time or another, she had seen all the turtles without their masks. She hadn't reacted this way to any of the others.
So, why was this such a big deal?
Her palms weren't sweaty the last time, and her heart wasn't beating a mile a minute.
This was Donnie, her best friend. Half man, half turtle. Sure, he had a crush on her, but that was ages ago.
She looked at his shell again. How was it that someone who had a shell, could also look so human at the same time?
Of course, she was half alien, and she looked completely human, so it wasn't that big of a deal.
"Ahem," a loud cough rang out through the living room.
She startled once again jumping slight, and turned, to see Leo, Mikey, Raph and Casey looking at her. The turtles all looked surprised and Casey had a knowing smirk on his face.
She couldn't wait until they were topside and she could smack that teasing look off his face.
Donnie was still busy in the kitchen, his back to her and fidgeting with his mask, retying it onto his face. Completely oblivious to what had just happened.
That was just SO Donnie.
The microwave dinged and April slightly jumped trying to get her feelings and hormones under control.
She watched Donnie out of the corner of her eye as grabbed a bag of newly popped popcorn out of the microwave and poured it into a bowl. He then grabbed his cup, and turned around, and sat down between her and Leo.
"Popcorn?" He asked with a bright smile, the mask firmly back on his face, holding the bowl out to her.
His brown eyes stared at her face, lighting up the entire room. As she looked into those eyes and nodded, reaching for the popcorn, she found herself feeling protective of him.
She decided, right then and there, that she wanted to be the only person to see him without a mask on.
Maybe she was being ridiculously possessive, but she didn't care. She wanted to be the only one that saw him that vulnerable.
That vulnerability was part of what made him human. And, she felt deep in her mind, another thought coming to the forefront.
Was this the beginning of something?
Did seeing him like that, both yesterday and today trigger a feeling that she was already having?
A catalyst to her heart?
She firmly pushed those thoughts deep, back into her subconscious.
And as she took a small bite of popcorn, and did her best to ignore how close Donnie was sitting to her, she thanked someone in heaven that she had one thing going for her while she tried to sort out her feelings.
While Donnie was the most intelligent person that she knew in the entire world, he wasn't the most observant.
She had plenty of time to figure things out.
FIN
This is actually a little prologue that I am doing for another story that is multi-chapter. I also couldn't get it out of my head, how cute those turtles are without their masks on, especially Donnie.